Howdy. Here's our brief listing of frequently asked questions. We'll expand on the list of answers as we receive more questions from users, but this should cover the basics until we have time to flesh it out.

Table of Contents

General Site Information

1. What is this site, anyway?
2. What are the benefits of registering for an account?
3. Who runs Protagonize?
4. Do the developers have a blog I could subscribe to?
5. What was the site developed in?
6. What browsers does Protagonize support?
7. What are the requirements to view the site?
8. What 3rd-party components do you use?

Advertising on Protagonize

1. How can I advertise on Protagonize?

Writing Stories, Branches, and Chapters

1. How do I get started writing on Protagonize?
2. Where can I find the story posting guidelines?
3. How can I edit a story, branch or chapter that I've written?
4. Can I link a branch in the addventure post I'm writing to a previous one?
5. I spent a long time writing this story branch or chapter, and when I posted it, someone else had already written it!

Your Content & Site Policies

1. How exactly are the rights to my content protected?
2. Are my email address and/or account information safe?
3. How can I tell if an item contains mature content or not?
4. I saw some nasty content somewhere on the site. What can I do?
5. What types of content are not allowed?
6. What does the "content by this author has been reported..." text mean on an author's profile?

How Protagonize Works

1. Is there a way to search for stories or authors?
2. How can I change the number of items that display per list?
3. What do all the icons mean?
4. What are some not-so-obvious but useful features I can use?
5. How do I enable or disable the profanity filter?
6. How do I hide my online status?
7. How are user, story, and branch/chapter ratings calculated?
8. How exactly do user rankings work?
9. What makes a story "hot"?
10. How are top rated stories calculated?
11. How can I delete my account?
12. Oops, I found a bug.
13. How can I subscribe to your RSS feeds?

About This Site

Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction. One author writes a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where everyone can participate. Curious? You can read more about how the site came to be over on our About Protagonize page. If you want to join in our community, feel free to register for a membership and take advantage of all the features we have to offer.

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Membership Benefits

If you register for a free Protagonize.com account, several options open up to you that you wouldn't normally have available as an unregistered user.

Here are some of the features that our members enjoy:

• Post and rate stories, branches, and chapters
• Add favourites and page markers
• Edit their profile
• Comment on stories or author profiles
• Send items to friends
• Contact authors
• View and print entire stories

On top of that, we're adding new features every day. The Protagonize blog describes new features as they're made available to members.

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Site Authors

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The Protagonize Blog

Yup, check out the Protagonize blog for site feature previews and other information. Make sure to subscribe to our blog RSS feed while you're there!

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Site Information

The site is built entirely in Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 and sits on top of a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database. Protagonize is happily hosted at ServerBeach, a Peer1 company.

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Browser Support

Protagonize has been tested with and currently officially supports the following browsers:

• Firefox 2.0.0.11
• Internet Explorer 6
• Internet Explorer 7
• Flock 1.0.3
• Opera 9.25 (some minor stylesheet issues)
• Safari 3.0.4

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Site Requirements

To achieve any kind of kind of decent user experience on Protagonize, you'll have to have JavaScript enabled in your browser, images enabled, and support for Cascading Stylesheets (CSS.) If you don't have any of those three turned on, we suggest you either loosen up or upgrade to a modern non text-based browser. :)

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3rd Party Components

We want to thank the many large and small organizations that have published open-source and free/public domain components that allowed us to make the our site's user experience that much better.

Protagonize.com proudly makes use of the following third-party components:

• Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)
  http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
• MoxieCode TinyMCE: JavaScript WYSIWYG Editor
  http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
• ASP.NET RSS Toolkit
  http://www.codeplex.com/ASPNETRSSToolkit
• Newtonsoft Json.NET
  http://james.newtonking.com/pages/json-net.aspx
• ASP.NET CAPTCHA Web Control
  http://www.codeproject.com/KB/custom-controls/CaptchaControl.aspx
• JSMIN, The JavaScript Minifier
  http://javascript.crockford.com/jsmin.html

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Advertising on Protagonize

We currently use Google AdSense for the majority of our advertising, but if you're interested in advertising independently on Protagonize.com, please read our advertising information and let us know. We can always work something out to suit your needs. Additional traffic statistics and our rate sheet will be provided upon contact.

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Getting Started Writing Stories

So, you've been meandering around the site, reading others' stories, and now you want to contribute something of your own. How do you go about doing that?

Well, first and foremost, you'll have to register for a free Protagonize membership. Once you've done that, a whole slew of new options will open up to you.

After registering, you have a couple of different ways to post content. First off, you can start a new story by clicking the "Protagonize!" link from your right-hand menu. That will get you started with a fresh, brand new story. If you're not signed in to your Protagonize account, you'll be prompted to do so before posting anything.

If you want to contribute a branch or chapter to someone else's story, it's as simple as reading a story that you enjoy until you get to an incomplete story fragment. You'll know that a branch or chapter is incomplete because it'll show a form to post a new fragment, instead of the normal branch or chapter content. Fill out the form with your new piece, press "Publish" once you're satisfied with your contribution, and it'll be saved. That's all there is to it.

Looking for inspiration, or more stories to read? Check out our main stories page.

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Posting Guidelines

Our posting guidelines can be found over on the Write A New Story page.

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Editing a Post

The poster of a story, branch or chapter can edit their post for up to 60 minutes after creating it, as long as no one has followed it up with a new post yet. If someone's already posted a follow-up, you can't edit it anymore; we can't have people changing their stories after the fact. :) To edit a story, just click the "Edit story/branch/chapter" link beside the content you've just posted:

If it's a story, you'll be able to edit everything, including tags and categories. If it's a branch or chapter, you'll have the standard editing options.

However, if someone's followed up on your post, the edit link will no longer show up — so if you need to edit, try not to wait too long before doing so! Note: The editors of the site may also edit posts here and there (not often), mostly to correct small, obvious typos. This is just general clean-up, and is in no way intended to cause harm to or modify the meaning of your story fragment.

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Linking a New Branch to Existing Ones

Due to popular demand, we've added the ability to link branches of addventure stories of a new post back to existing/previous branches in the same story. How does this work? It's actually pretty simple. When you're posting a new branch in an existing story, you'll see a new link above the branch title boxes that looks like this:

Click the "link to previous branch" link, choose a previous branch in the story from the popup, and hit the "Link" button. The pathway should now be linked up to the previous branch you created, uneditable, and look something like this:

Now once you save your branch, the path you linked back to a previous branch will jump directly there when someone clicks on it. Keep in mind that you can't link to the same previous branch twice in the same posting, and you can only link to previous branches that you would have crossed in order to get to your current point in the story.

If you picked the wrong branch to link to, or simply decided to write your own new branch title, just click the "unlink" button to clear the linkage. Keep in mind, this functionality only appears on addventures, and not on linear stories.

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Story Fragment Duels (!)

Please be careful if you spent a long period of time writing the same branch or chapter. It's entirely possible that someone else is completing the same fragment as you, and in that case, since we don't lock posts while you edit, whoever submits their post first will "win" and you'll have to move your post elsewhere.

We're looking into a better solution to this problem, but the options are limited to either locking branches and chapters for editing, or adding some kind of background check every few minutes to see if someone's posted your fragment. Locking posts for editing seems a more likely option, but we won't be adding that until we can afford to have story fragments locked off for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, once the site has been up a little longer.

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Protecting Your Content

All content published by individual authors on Protagonize is protected by and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

The basic gist of the license is that (to quote Wikipedia):

• Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
• Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

For the legally inclined, a more detailed version of the license is available for your reading pleasure here.

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Your Privacy

Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information concerning the security of your user account information.

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Mature Content

Items containing mature content should be marked as mature. Items flagged as mature will not show up in many areas of the site (for instance, on the homepage), so be sure not to flag an item as mature by accident. Author profiles or comments containing mature content will be edited by Protagonize staff as necessary.

Keep in mind that if a story is flagged as mature, every branch or chapter under that story is also considered mature, even if it may not contain mature content.

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Reporting Content

The site is not actively moderated, so we count on users to report content that is inappropriately flagged as mature, or goes beyond our internal "mature" rating in terms of content. We hope that mutual respect will enable everyone in the Protagonize community to work together to handle policing the site and making sure content stays at appropriate levels throughout. At the bottom of each story, branch, chapter, or user profile, you'll see a "Report this item" link. Please use it if necessary, but don't abuse it! If you see an item that is not flagged as mature, but should be, please let us know via the link. The "Report this item" link should also be used if you find anything from the list of disallowed content below. Keep in mind that abusing the reporting functionality may result in negative consequences for the reporter, at our discretion.

While we do allow specific types of mature content on the site when properly flagged as such, we don't allow any kind of hate speech or content that would be in excess of an "R" rating, in MPAA terms.

The maintainers of the site reserve the right to remove any content (be it stories, branches, chapters, comments, or user profile information) that we find offensive or illegal. We're reasonable people; content that we think should be flagged mature will be flagged as such if we come across it, but we're hoping that members don't cross the line and post anything overly distasteful or illegal. While chances are good that you will only be warned for a first offense, we are also more than willing to permanently ban members who break the rules regularly.

More information about content rules can be found at our Terms of Use page.

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Disallowed Content

Here's a brief (but not comprehensive) listing of the types of content that are not permissible and will likely result in the aforementioned content being removed immediately:

• Content containing hate speech or inciting hatred in any way
• Obscene content, or content containing overly pornographic, violent, illegal, or aberrational elements
• Libelous or slanderous remarks towards real people or legal entities
• Copyrighted material not owned by the poster and not available in the public domain
• Attacks on other site members, be they unprovoked or otherwise
• Advertising, marketing, or spam of any kind

In addition to the removal of the offending content, members found posting content of the types listed above may be banned or have their accounts permanently removed, at our discretion. This includes all of the comments, story, branch or chapters posted by a specific user, so please think carefully before posting anything that could be construed as overly offensive.

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Reported Authors

The "reported" text on an author's profile (in the Author Popularity section) displays the total number of times a profile, story, branch, or chapter by the author in question has been reported to Protagonize staff, and that report has been verified and resolved. Unresolved reports will not show up in author popularity information. This means that either an administrator or moderator has reviewed the report and has resolved it.

However, that resolution (assuming the report was not frivolous), if it's against a specific author, will remain on that author's profile as a warning to other readers and authors.

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Search Functionality

We're currently in the process of adding some basic search functionality to the site. In the meantime, feel free to browse the Stories listing by tag or category, and Authors listings by browsing author names and ratings.

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Changing the Number of Items Displayed

You can tweak the site interface to your own liking (slightly) by changing the number of items that display in all listing controls throughout the site. The default setting is 5 items per listing, but you're welcome to set it however you like.

To change this setting, simply scroll down to the bottom of a page that contains several listing controls (such as the homepage, or the authors or stories main pages) and make a new selection from the "showing ... items per category" control:

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Icon Definitions

Well, all of the icons on the site should have tooltips explaning their function if you mouse over them, but in case you're having a hard time figuring out their individual functions, here's a brief overview:

• Write a new story
• View entire story / View all stories by author
• Add (or remove) a favourite
• Add (or remove) a page marker
• Jump to latest branch/chapter in story
• Send this item to a friend
• Edit a story, branch or chapter
• Edit my profile
• Contact this author
• Report this item

As an aside, if you see the same icon graphic on a different coloured background button, there's a very good chance that it has a similar function in both cases, related to the context.

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Not-So-Obvious Features of Protagonize

There are a few things you may have missed when glancing at Protagonize the first time around. We figured we'd let you know about a few of these nifty yet unobtrusive features before you find out accidentally:

• Most story and author listings throughout the site will allow you to subscribe to their specific RSS feed by clicking the icon beside the title of the control.
• When you're several posts into a story, and you've forgotten where you're at, or you just want to print the whole thing out, click the icon to pop up a window displaying the entire story path you've taken to date, in an easy-to-print layout. This option is only available to registered users!
• As a registered user, looking at "My Page Markers", "My Favourites" and "My Top Rated" will not only list the stories you've read in a variety of different views, it'll also let you know which of your favourite/marked or top rated stories have been updated recently.
• When reading a story, the icon at the bottom of the story box will jump you to the latest branch or chapter posted in that story.
• Additionally, clicking the "branches/chapters" link below a story name in list views will generally take you to the latest fragment posted in that story.
• There are a couple of ways to see all postings be a specific author: you can click the "stories + branches" link under their name in author listings, or you can click the "See all stories" link from "The Goods" panel on the right-hand side of their profile page.
• This FAQ is actually quite informative, if you read it through entirely. :)

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Enabling & Disabling the Profanity Filter

To disable the profanity filter, you need to edit your profile. Under Privacy & other options, un-check the "Enable Profanity Filter" box. Once you save your profile, the filter should be disabled. To re-enable the profanity filter, just check the box and re-save your profile.

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Hiding Your Online Status

To hide your online status, simply edit your profile, and under Privacy & other options, check the "Hide Online Status" box. Once you save your profile, you should appear as an anonymous registered user. To switch back, just uncheck the box and re-save your profile.

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How User & Story Ratings Are Calculated

Branches and chapters are voted on directly by registered users, and this rating is the basis for all generated ratings throughout the site, including stories and authors. The rating you see for any specific story is an average of all votes for each post in a story, out of 5. User ratings are an average of the ratings of all stories and branches or chapters posted by that user.

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User Rankings

User rankings are based entirely on the amount you post. Similar to how you'd be rated on message boards, the more you post, the higher your ranking. The ranking icon is unrelated to your user rating, which is explained here.

<10 posts = Lackey
10 posts = Hothead
25 posts = Gambler
50 posts = Daredevil
100 posts = Mercenary
250 posts = Adventurer
500 posts = Swashbuckler
1,000 posts = Argonaut
2,500 posts = Hero
5,000 posts = Legend
10,000 posts = Immortal
Moderator
Editor

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Hot Stories

"Hot" stories are determined using our special sauce™ (ahem) algorithm. It's not all that complicated (for now) — a combination of several weighted factors, including frequency of updates to a certain story (i.e. new comments, branches/chapters, favourites, and markers), the story's overall rating by readers, and the "freshness" of the story.

On top of those factors, if a story hasn't been updated in over 31 days, it will never show up in the Hot Stories list.

While it's probably quite possible to "game" the system right now, we'll work on making that a little less obvious t

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Top Stories

Top stories are calculated in a pretty simple fashion. They're the highest rated stories on average, with a fixed number of minimum votes required in order to qualify. That way, voting a 5.0 on your own story won't let it show up on the homepage right away. :)

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Deleting Your Account

We'll be adding the option to delete your account yourself very soon. In the meantime, if you'd like us to remove your account (including all of your posts and comments), please contact us and we'll remove your account.

Please note: Make sure to email us using the address associated with your account, or we won't be able to remove you.

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Reporting Bugs

We're not perfect, so it's entirely possible that some bugs have made their way through onto the site. We appreciate all bug reports — please send them to us via email and we'll address the issue as fast as we can.

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RSS Feeds

Please take a look at our detailed feeds listing for information on subscribing to the various feeds spread throughout the site.

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